Consistent equivalence principle tests with fast radio bursts

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method using angular statistics of dispersion measure fluctuations from fast radio bursts to test the equivalence principle, potentially improving current constraints significantly.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach to test the equivalence principle using FRB dispersion measure fluctuations, avoiding divergence issues in cosmological potentials, and forecasts improved constraints.

Findings

Constraints on the equivalence principle could be improved by orders of magnitude.

Angular power spectrum of DM fluctuations can detect EP violations.

Method avoids divergence problems in cosmological gravitational potentials.

Abstract

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are astrophysical transients of still debated origin. So far several hundred events have been detected, mostly at extragalactic distances, and this number is expected to grow significantly over the next years. The radio signals from the burst experience dispersion as they travel through the free electrons along the line-of-sight characterised by the dispersion measure (DM) of the radio pulse. In addition, each photon also experiences a gravitational Shapiro time delay while travelling through the potentials generated by the large-scale structure. If the equivalence principle (EP) holds, the Shapiro delay is the same for photons of all frequencies. In case the EP is broken, one would expect an additional dispersion to occur which could be either positive or negative for individual sources. Here we suggest to use angular statistics of the DM fluctuations to put constraints on the EP parametrized by the post-Newtonian parameter $\gamma$. Previous studies suffer from the problem that the gravitational potential responsible for the delay diverges in a cosmological setting, which our approach avoids. We carry out a forecast for a population of FRBs observable within the next years and show that any significant detection of the DM angular power spectrum will place constraints on the EP that are by a few orders of magnitude more stringent than current limits.